Slaton woman, son recovering after his kidney donation Feb. 14

Hearts weren't the only organ on the minds of one Slaton family on Valentine's Day.

Amado Coronado donated a kidney to his mother, Noemi Davis, on Valentine's Day. The two went through the procedure as part of University Medical Center's kidney transplant partnership with The Methodist Hospital in Houston.

Hearts weren’t the only organ on the minds of one Slaton family on Valentine’s Day.

Noemi Davis (pronounced Naomi) learned she had kidney failure last March after getting blood work done for a routine gastrointestinal procedure. Her family doctor told her that her creatinine and blood urea nitrogen levels were out of whack.

He immediately sent her to a nephrologist, a physician who has been trained in the diagnosis and management of kidney disease.

After staying at Covenant Medical Center for almost a month, it was determined a kidney-specific disease had caused Davis to have kidney failure, and she was told had to go through dialysis.

“After a while, in discussing with my nephrologist, he said my only other option would be to have a transplant,” Davis said. “By that time my kidneys were pretty much gone. (I was) shocked. I didn’t really know how to react to something like that.”

Although Davis is no stranger to the operating room, a transplant was the furthest thing from her mind. She had a bilateral mastectomy in 2005 to remove low malignant tumors from her breasts, and in 2009 she underwent back surgery. She has also had her appendix and gall bladder removed.

Davis said she quickly enrolled in transplant classes at University Medical Center to prepare for her transplant.

Match made in heaven

Davis’ son, Amado “Moe” Coronado, 23, said at first, his mother wouldn’t hear of any of her children being tested to be kidney donors. Davis and her husband, Keith Davis, have six children, who range in age from 17 to 26.

“She told us she didn’t want any of the kids to even try for whatever reason. That’s the way I took it at first. I listened to her,” Coronado said. “Probably after a week, I thought about it and said, ‘That’s not her decision to make.’ I happened to go in there one day and gave blood samples and ended up being a match. As soon as I found that out, we ended up jumping right into it.”

Wade Crowson, the director of transplant services at UMC, said it’s common to see children donate organs to parents, parents donate to children and non-family members donate to friends.

Parents often say they wouldn’t have a problem giving an organ to their child, but they don’t want their child to have to give up something for them, Crowson said. That’s when transplant services staff remind the transplant recipient they would do the same thing for their parent if they could.

“I just think mainly, the family members want to help their loved one,” Crowson said. “Since you don’t need two kidneys, it doesn’t put them at any major risk to donate their kidney.”

Davis felt relieved when she found out her son, then 22, was a match. She didn’t have to look for another donor, or wait on a long list of people needing kidneys. She did, however, have to travel nine hours to Houston’s Methodist J.C. Walter Jr. Transplant Center for the surgery.

Worries and woes

In September, UMC entered into an affiliation with The Methodist Hospital of Houston’s transplant center, Crowson said. Under the contract, patients in the West Texas area are able to do transplant evaluation testing locally and are sent to Houston for the operation. Transplant recipients typically stay for about 14 days, then return to Lubbock for post-transplant checkups.

Crowson said other transplant services in the area require patients to travel back and forth for doctor visits. This program allows the families to live at home in between visits and therefore is less costly, he said.

Davis was the second patient to come through the program since it began, Crowson said, but UMC anticipates volume will pick up.

Davis said prior to the surgeries, her son was evaluated to be a donor, and doctors learned his kidney had multiple vessels.

Dr. A Osama Gaber, director of the Methodist J.C. Walter Jr. Transplant Center, helped Davis’ surgeon, Dr. Richard Knight, on the case. Gaber also is a professor in the department of surgery at Weill Cornell Medical College of Cornell University.

The kidney develops in the embryo and several cells branch out to make the kidney, Gaber explained. Each one has its own blood supply, but as the embryo grows in the womb, the vessels fuse and create one blood vessel.

Sometimes, this process doesn’t take place, so the kidney ends up with multiple blood vessels, he said. Some transplant centers would have chosen to not operate.

“We made it a challenge for ourselves because we know that it’s hard to come up with one donor,” he said.

Crowson said, with multiple vessels, patients can be at a much higher risk, and UMC wouldn’t have taken the case before the partnership was formed with Methodist.

“Prior to the affiliation, we would have turned him down as a donor due to the anatomy of the kidney,” he said. “We probably would not have done that particular donor here in Lubbock. Because of the expertise of the surgeons at Methodist, they’re able to do things beyond what we would have done.”

Davis was not happy to leave her daughter at home in Slaton while she, her husband and Coronado traveled to Houston for the procedures, and it worried her that she hadn’t met the Houston doctors.

She met Knight, her surgeon, a few days before her surgery. Putting a face to the name quickly put her at ease.

Coronado had other worries as his surgery neared. He knew he would never back out of the surgery, but when he had time alone with his thoughts, his mind raced.

“Probably the thing that would have gotten me the most is if it didn’t work,” he said. “If I would have given her my kidney, and the surgery had not succeeded. That would have disappointed me the most. I would have felt like, I don’t know. Not only that, there were so many things going into the surgery, like ‘Am I going to come back and live another day? Is my mom? Are we both?’ There are so many factors; it’s overwhelming.”

Davis was worried about her son more than herself. He had never undergone a surgical procedure or had anesthesia. Seeing her son wheeled away to surgery was the most difficult moment for her. There was nothing more she could do, and she prepared herself for the worst.

“Up until the day of surgery, I still kept telling my husband I didn’t want to do it. Even as we were hooked up to IVs, I kept telling him I didn’t want to do it. Even after (Coronado) was wheeled off, I kept telling my husband I didn’t want to do it,” Davis said.

Heartfelt gift

Although the pair didn’t plan it, the surgeries took place Feb. 14. Coronado said the date of the surgery didn’t phase him, but he was glad to give his mom such a memorable gift on the holiday dedicated to love.

“It really was special that it happened that way, but it wasn’t a factor. ... Since it did happen on Valentine’s Day, we took it that way (saying the kidney was a Valentine’s Day gift),” Coronado said. “I think she appreciated it, and every Valentine’s Day now, I’m going to think about that, and it’s going to be a constant reminder of the gift I gave her to save her life.”

The Valentine’s Day surgery came as a surprise, Davis said, and it soon turned into a joke with the family.

“I just thought, what a day to have it on,” Davis said. “I told my husband I didn’t want any flowers because I was getting a kidney. It was pretty neat.”

Gaber said Coronado’s surgery took about two and a half hours, and Davis’ surgery took about three.

Davis said the surgeries were fairly routine, and she was discharged March 1. She was delighted to be back in West Texas where the traffic is light, and she can spend time with her daughter again. She’s recovering quickly and will visit UMC regularly in upcoming months to make sure there are no complications from surgery.

Coronado left Houston Feb. 24 and returned to Lubbock in time to celebrate his 23rd birthday. He’s in Slaton recovering and starting back to work this week. He said he feels about 80 percent, and he’s happy his mom is doing so great.

“As soon as I had seen her, almost the very next day, she looked like she was alive again,” he said. “We’ve laughed already. We’ve smiled. We’ve done it all. It’s been really emotional. I think of it that way, at least. I wouldn’t change it for the world.”

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I would just like to thank a few people who have been with me since day one and those who helped in the end first and foremost Dr. Patel, Geoff from the Kidney Center, the coordinators from UMC, Xcel Energy, Uncle Fred and Aunt Karen Hobrecht and to all my family and friends especially my wonderful children and husband